Vanity Fair asked some Americans that question.

Google’s Android is installed on more devices than any other mobile software system in the world, but it’s not as popular in business as main competitor Apple.

“A new poll covering thousands of Muslims in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey and Lebanon found that most thought poorly of Al Qaeda nearly a year after Osama bin Laden’s death,” Los Angeles Times reports.

Can we now please leave all the Islamophobic nonsense about all Muslims being potential terrorist?

I love many films by David Fincher (“The Social Network”, “Panic Room”, “Seven”, “Fight Club”), but I can’t get over my disappointment with his “Girl with a Dragon Tattoo”, which I had the unfortunate opportunity to watch the other day. Maybe my disappointment is due to the fact that I compare it two the Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. I could also be that I find it so odd watching Sweden through the eyes of an American. Places in Stockholm I know well from the time I lived there were the same, but very, very different. I remember a friend of mine who lived in New York who once complained about all the disaster films set in his city. He couldn’t really let go of his own experience of the places on screen, and that ruined the film for him. Perhaps have I just had my first “New York film experience”?

In a rather interesting article—more a classic meditation, really—by Slavoj Zisek, I learn that Fyodor Dostoevsky never wrote what is, perhaps, his most famous line.

This is something I just stumbled over. It’s from 2006, but hey, Aristotle lived in the third century BCE and still he has something to teach us bloggers.

If you need more proof of her madness, here it is.

Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung defends The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, says Jewish influence was one of the factors leading to Auschwitz, and makes link between Norway massacre and Mossad.

The Norwegian Humanist Association, which published an article on Galtung in its magazine, makes some bizarre comments. It criticises Galtung for defending anti-Semitic literature, but it also says that it’s a fact that many Jews are powerful and that it’s legitimate to question what consequences this Jewish presence have on society.

Read about it at Haaretz.

Read the Norwegian Humanist Association’s comments in Norwegian here.

The Swedish debate on Jewish circumcision continues.

According to a news study, atheists and agnostics are more driven by compassion to help others than are highly religious people.

I wonder what Ayn Rand would make of that.

Anyhow, religion is not all bad. These are some good things waiting for religious people according to other studies:

• Religion helps you resist junk food.
• Religion makes you happier.
• Religion soothes your anxiety.
• Religion protects you against depressive symptoms.
• Religion motivates you to see your doctor.
• Religion lowers your blood pressure.

I haven’t looked into these studies in detail, but something about all this tells me it’s really about Christianity.

Mormonism is moving into more parts of America than any other religious group.

I was about to post a comment of this sad story yesterday, but I never got around to do it. It’s just so awful that America’s conservative block is so stuck in the Middle Ages that they can’t see past a person’s homosexuality.

An estimated sixteen million women in China may be married to homosexual men. Societally anti-gay attitudes are not only a problem for gay people.

My review of David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo wasn’t too good—I was a bit disappointed. However, there is one thing about the film that I really, really like a lot—the intro. As with Fincher’s classic, Seven, the into is superb. It stuck in my head and I felt I just had to own the song, so I bought in on iTunes. It’s a remix of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”. But I’m not sure it’s actually the music that I like; had it not been for the intro’s artistic imagery, I don’t think it would have been so great.

Watch the intro here.

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My God, 119 million dollars for a painting by Edvard Munch!

“The Bible is clear, God’s definition of marriage is between a man and a woman,” says homophobic pastor Billy Graham in a campaign for constitutional discrimination of gay people. Well, God is not the homophobic force Graham wants Him to be. Read 1 Samuel 18:1-4 and you find a same-sex marriage.

American conservatives have much to learn from their British counterparts.

Jay Michaelson is right.

No one seems to know why.

I have had some problem with my email the past two days. The problem is fixed now, but it will take some time to reply to all.

Daily Kos makes its own. For the record, I’m still opposing governments saving big companies—but I like a catchy bumper sticker, too.

A city court in St Petersburg has fined Nikolai Alexeyev 5,000 rubles for breaching a new, local law that prohibits “gay propaganda”. Saying that homosexuality is not a perversion is apparently propaganda under the new law.

More at Pink News.

I rarely become nostalgic, but suddenly, today, something of the sort came over me. It’s been thirteen years since I left Stockholm for Amsterdam, and it’s now been eight years since I left Amsterdam for Malmö. I loved all these places, but when I made the decision to leave, I never really regretted it. The past is the past, and I look forward. Besides, travel in Europe nowadays is what local bus rides used to be when I was a small boy.

Anyhow, I just booked a hotel room in Stockholm for my birthday weekend later this month. I’m turning 40, and I will spend it with my in-laws and friends from the past. But while doing this planning, that strange feeling of exited nostalgia came over me. Maybe it’s old age.

And there is a Star Wars religion called Jediism.

I love this:

Professor Pongoo is an independent candidate in the Pentland Hills ward for the City of Edinburgh Council.

With 444 votes, he received more than both the Liberal Democrat candidate and the Green party candidate in the local authority elections.

LOL.

It’s Friday and in a few hours, Shabbat is here. My personal goal is to become more of a shomer Shabbat. In my own personal, individualised way, of course. And not so much for religious reasons as for the need of a day devoted to rest and a life offline.

Have a nice weekend!

This article is in Swedish, read it if you’re able to.

Fro the Guardian:

Cameron’s former rival for the leadership, David Davis, told the Observer: “I think if you ask the man on the street what his priorities are, House of Lords reform and gay marriage would not be among them. It would be jobs, cutting taxes, prosperity, growth. It is the economy, stupid. That has never been more true.”

This is the usual conservative moaning. Same-sex marriage is in no way the opposite to economic reform.

Let’s stop the “pinkwashing” nonsense!

“Israel serves as a lesson to others about respecting individual freedom and liberties in a land steeped in tradition,” says one who attended the conference.

What an odd way to express an opinion.

The wind of stupid backward intolerance is blowing all over Europe, and has now hit the Netherlands hard. A new law will ban the selling of cannabis to foreigners, which will make working legalisation history. But I do not think it will matter much:

Technically, buying pot and hash in the Netherlands has always been illegal, but since 1976 a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy arose over possession of less than five grams. By the 1990s, pot coffee shops or “cannabis cafes” were issued “toleration licenses,” effectively allowing them to sell small quantities of soft drugs as long as they didn’t also sell alcohol. The opaque procurement of large stocks by cafe owners clearly violates Dutch law, but authorities simply look the other way.

Precisely. What will happen is that cannabis will once again be technically illegal but a ban impossible to uphold. After all, the Dutch are not like the Scandinavians in their attitude towards the authorities.

And here is a fact most campaigners against legal cannabis neglect:

Statistics show the rate of marijuana use in the Netherlands is actually lower than in the United States or Britain.

You read it right.

Nevertheless, the new law will have its severe harms on Dutch cannabis culture. Peaceful people who only wish to get high will once again be criminalised. For what good? None at all. But that’s the mind-set of prohibitionists. They just want to keep things illegal no matter what the result.

I’m not an Israeli citizen—yet—but from my viewpoint, Israel would do good with a Likud-Labour-Kadima coalition.

Greece’s Nazi Party, the Golden Dawn, is predicted to gain about 7 per cent in today’s general election.

Prediction:

And the Communist Party is about as big as the Nazis. Two fascist parties enter the Greek parliament. Unbelievable!

François Hollande has won France’s presidential election.

Europe wakes up to one massive hangover after yesterday’s general election in Greece. An outspoken neo-Nazi party is back in the Greek parliament and the Communist Party is gaining strong.

The next species to take over the Earth is the octopus.

(Via Vilsjin.)

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Israel has a shortage of gas masks. Meanwhile, in New York, one can buy Israeli gas masks retrofitted to be used as very effective bongs.

A nice video of the city by Jörg Niggli.

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This is very unsettling, to say the least.

Adam Yauch of Beastie Boys died on 4 May.

Voter in North Carolina approved constitutional discrimination in a state referendum yesterday. Assholes!

After yesterday’s primary elections in three American states, Mitt Romney has 916 delegates and is now only 228 delegates shy of the 1,144 he needs to clinch the Republican nomination.

Yesterday, North Carolina voted in favour of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Not too log ago, the same state had a ban on interracial marriage in its constitution.

Yes, you read that right.

How I hate organisations that want to ban minority rights.

“President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president,” Rick Klein reports.

But, but, but, Obama is a Muslim, so how can he be in favour of same-sex marriage? The extremists over at World Net Daily don’t know what’s what.

Oh, for Fox’s sake!

In other words, no cause for fear.

“The Hamas government in Gaza has been operating a force over the past few months whose sole task is to prevent the firing of rockets into Israel,” Haaretz reports.

Wow, this is big!

“Israel’s new coalition echoes the unity government that came together on the eve of the Six Day War,” Benny Morris writes.

It’s just so very hard to tell their computer from Apple’s.

The maximum prices mean a telephone call will cost at most 29 cents a minute.

It’s nice to read an article about good relations between Sweden and Israel for once. So much of the general media picture is occupied by leftist anti-Israel sentiments.

Satire is the best tool in the fight against bigotry.

“French President-elect Francois Hollande is suggesting that outgoing leader Nicolas Sarkozy’s government underestimated the country’s budget problems,” AP reports.

The classic left-wing way of backing away from unrealistic election-campaign promises. All over Europe, we see the same thing. Leftist politicians promising to turn their nations into socialist paradises, only to back away and blame their predecessor the minute they take office.

It’s Friday night and I prepare for the weekend. Looking back at the past week, there were four big things happening.

In Greece, an alarming number of people voted on a Nazi Party and a Communist Party. This makes an outspoken anti-democratic bloc of nearly 15 per cent. Unbelievable!

In France, the presidential election ended with a new president, the socialist François Hollande.

In Israel, a new government was formed in a way that some believe indicates a looming war.

And, finally, in America, President Obama came out publicly in favour of same-sex marriage.

שבת שלום

(Via @jonnygeller.)

A two-week-old boy died after being circumcised by a doctor in Norway. Few details are yet known about what happened, but the tragic event is likely to give new spark to xenophobic claims that Jews and Muslims deliberately harm boys by circumcision. The usual mob of prohibitionists acted immediately with anew demands for a ban on Jewish and Muslim circumcision. But a ban would do nothing to prevent harm to boys. People will not abandon their deeply held religious, ethical, and cultural beliefs because a hostile majority make a law. What is needed is a routine to help parents to a safe circumcision for their newborn sons. The arguments are basically the same as for abortion. A ban saves no one, but legal procedures and less stigmatisation do.

Read about it in Norwegian at Aftenposten.

The organisers of Uppsala Pride have barred Sweden’s Liberal Party because it doesn’t support the communist class-warfare ideology. Unfortunately, this is not the first time extremist communists have hijacked a gay-rights manifestation. The problem is that this plays well into the hand of those who wish to label gay rights a radical, leftist project.

Read about it in Swedish at QX.

Markus Kylberg, an extremist Swedish Humanist, atheist activist, and self-proclaimed “liberal”, writes that Jewish circumcision is worse than sexually abuse children.

Kylberg writes, in my translation, “If you only consider the physical and mental effects it has on the child, sexual abuse (as long as it doesn’t involve penetration or harm the child in some other way) has less impact on the child then circumcision, which permanently alters the body’s appearance and involves some risks for the child’s health.”

Read it in Swedish at Newsmill.

Bad for our brains, good for our workouts.

Progress in the Republican Party:

George W. Bush pushed for a federal ban on same-sex marriage during his 2004 re-election run. But Bush has since said he favors civil unions, and now, days after President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage, his pollster from that race is recommending Republicans come around on same-sex marriage and gay rights.

In a not too distant future, people will look back at the Republican opposition to gay right with disgust. The sooner the conservatives in America realise this, the better.

Markus Kylberg: “I don’t believe Jews will stop circumcise their children. But I want circumcision to be illegal. If anyone wants to circumcise their child, they must simply move to a country that allows it.”

If anyone has any doubt about the xenophobic agenda of the Swedish Humanist Association. The hysterical debate on male circumcision is not about boys’ welfare; it’s about getting rid of Jews and Muslims.

Rap star Jay-Z compares discrimination against gay people to racism.

He’s whatever you want him to be, apparently.

Progress in New England.

Geneticist Harry Ostrer argues that Jewishness is a biological trait, not just a cultural one.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt is facing a storm of criticism from several quarters after using the term “ethnic Swedes”.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on homophobia and racism.

Jean-Claude Juncker is right to be angry at all the talk of a Greek exit.

Good for Y-Love, good for all gay Jews in the Orthodox community.

This is my favourite, but there are plenty more.

It’s a bit ironic that Sweden, often hailed by its largely secularist population as an atheist haven, is one of few nations to mark the ascension of Jesus into heaven with a public holiday. But so it is, and no one of the usual hate-all-religion mob seems too upset about it. This only validates my suspicion that much of the angry and vocal opposition to religion is closely linked to other people’s religion. Christian traditions are nice, unlike those Jewish and Muslim ones that are all bad and no good to no one.

Seen in the picture is Benvenuto Tisi’s Ascension of Christ from 1520.

Seems like Jesus spent a lot of time at the gym.

Matthew Yglesias:

He [Alexis Tsipras, head of the Coalition of the Radical Left in Greece] says he rejects the E.U.-imposed austerity program but wants to stay in the euro and in the European Union. But Greece has a large primary budget deficit and no source of market financing. The E.U. is insisting on an austerity program, but it’s also giving them cold, hard cash in the interim. Reject the austerity program and you lose the E.U./IMF money and need to implement an even harsher austerity program. Tsipras is a bit like a guy standing in your living room threatening to blow his own brains out unless you pay him money, a proposition he offers on the theory that you’d rather not see your furniture ruined.

It pretty much sums up all extremist populism that haunts much of Europe.

Greece, New York, that is.

In Swedish, Torbjörn Jerlerup compares the two evils and warn of a new 1920s.

Chris Bryant: “The argument that marriage is just about procreation is as cruel to those straight couples who find love past the age of childbearing, are not able to have children or indeed choose not to have children as it is offensive to gay couples, whether they choose to adopt or not.”

We love him.

One small step towards the 21st century.

You can always trust people to blame Jews for whatever problem is discussed. In a reader comment to yet another of the Telegraph’s wet-dream articles on the longed-for collapse of the European Union, this one by überconservative Janet Daley, I read, “If Germany and the EU stopped funding Israel. there would be plenty of money for pensions etc in Europe.”

Cross-border ecumenism?

Yesterday, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in America announced its backing of same-sex marriage. Good, good, good.

Watch her performance in Springfield here.

A mass-murderer is gone.

I’ve been really bad at updating my journal the past few days. I feel a bit guilty about that, but there are good reasons for my lack of time—both private ones and professional ones. I’m currently serving on the jury in a big criminal case, which takes a lot of time and energy normally spent on following the news.

I will resume blogging on Thursday, 24 May.

I’m on the train towards Stockholm and a weekend with my in-laws. The past few days have been intensive and I look forward to the weekend, not only because I get to see family but because I’m turning forty on Sunday. I’ve been told it’s a milestone in a man’s life, so I’m curious to learn if there’s any truth to this.

Brian Earp makes the case that it could, and he has some valid points. However, Earp is a prohibitionist, and as in the abortion debate, this matters. The “ban all circumcision”-“Jews mutilate children” crowd are immune to arguments just as the “abortion is murder”-people are too morally upset to accept that pro-choice and harm reduction is anything but pro-genocide.

The former Secretary of State has seen the light.

This is absurd.

A new law that will make absolutely no good for the people it’s meant to protect. I don’t mind that Sweden refuses to accept to legally recognise underage marriage, but the problem is that marriages that are legal in other countries ought to be recognised. Gay people already suffer from this type of legislation as our marriages are recognised in some countries and thrown upon in others.

Anti-gay activist, Bryan Fischer, says that if the Republican Party accommodates “the tiny two per cent of the population who practice unnatural sexual behaviour” it will be “the undoing of the party”. Yeah, because homophobia is what American conservatism is about? Idiot.

It’s old news by now, but early this morning, Sweden’s Loreen won the Eurovision Song Contest.

A third federal judge has overturned the so-called Defence of Marriage Act from 1996.

Leigh Alexander is pleased with the Swedish win.

Dan Littauer writes about the everyday reality of gay people in Azerbaijan.

If you need to relive last night’s Eurovision Song Contest, I’d suggest you read through Stuart Heritage and Heidi Stephens’s live-blog of the event.

I’m very much in favour of religious freedom, but when religious fanatics mess with Lady Gaga—well, just don’t do it! On a serious note, free speech is as important as religious freedom, and the fanatics’ amongst both the religious and secular who wants to make a choice between the two has to be stopped.

I’m turning forty today. My husband and I are in Stockholm, the city where we met about fifteen years ago. Back then, we both lived here, but in 1999, I left for Amsterdam, and then, in 2004, we both moved to Malmö. Somehow, it felt appropriate to celebrate my big day here. We have spent most of the day walking about in the beautiful summer weather. Later tonight, we’ll have dinner with friends and family.

Earlier today, I snapped this photo from our hotel. Seen in the picture is the mediaeval Old Town, with the tower of the German Church rising above the houses.

I ended my birthday with friends at nightclub Patricia. Snapped this picture of Stockholm’s Old Town.

At this moment, Loreen, who won the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday, is number one in most of Europe.

The pastor’s talk about putting gay people in fenced camps is precisely what the Nazis did to gay people in the 1930s.

This ought to upset some people.

Iran has developed a cyber weapon that allows its fascist regime to spy on us all.

Standing ovation for a man who preaches genocide and mass killing of gay people is nothing new. History repeats itself.

More here.

Loreen’s homecoming.

The futuristic blog io9 takes a look at the best scenes in Heinrich Hoffman’s classic Struwwelpeter.

The Muslim Council of Britain has launched a website called “Muslims Defending Marriage” to “defend the meaning of marriage, guard its sanctity and protect the welfare of children.”

Poor heterosexuals whose relationships are in such frail condition that they need exclusive pampering to keep their sanctity.

“Attorney-General Yehudah Weinstein accepted a High Court recommendation allowing regional councils to employ non-Orthodox rabbis with state funds,” the Jerusalem Post reports.

Don’t get me wrong, hiring rabbis should not be something any state does, but considering the Israel’s decades-old Orthodox monopoly, it’s a welcome step.

I haven’t heard this song for many years, but an episode of EastEnders brought it back to me. George Michael wrote it after his partner died and in my opinion it captures much of what religion is to most people.

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Fascinating. It’s like watching the Titanic sink.

I’m not sure the sign offers any privacy.

I’m not sure it helps to explain what he did, but I’m pretty sure some homophobe will pick up on this and make it “proof” of how dangerous homosexuality is to society.

Here we go again.

What’s wrong with these people?!

“Southern Europe’s debtor states must pledge their gold reserves and national treasure as collateral under a €2.3 trillion stabilisation plan gaining momentum in Germany,” the Telegraph reports.

It might help, but I’d still prefer federalism.

Julian Assange, who just might be the biggest drama queen ever, has lost his court case—again.

The Orthodox establishment in Israel is scared of modernity.

You never seize to be surprised by the new lows archived by the Sweden’s Extreme Left. In a column in leftist tabloid Aftonbladet, hardcore communist Andreas Malm writes that the Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood—an Islamist organisation opposed the Western influence—is libertarian.

Amongst other things, the man drugged and then strangled another man in the sex-room of a Berlin gay bar.

Louis Virtel has made the list. I don’t agree with it all. What fascinates me about Madonna is her fearlessness when doing absurd albums like American Life.

In America, the homophobic lobby often brag about its success in state referendums on gay rights. People don’t want equality, the homophobic lobbyists say. Well, Washington State just might become the trend-breaker.

The world needs to act before it is too late.

Time to invest in a good bunker!

Detainees have been forced to wear headphones with music from Sesame Street on repeat for hours or days on end.

I wrote about my favorite song back in 2009.